Ethnography and Fiction

In this course, we will study the relationship between ethnography and voyeurism in fiction. While ethnography is the staple of anthropologists studying foreign cultures, writers often use ethnography in voyeuristic ways to study their own. This has affected genres, techniques, and cultural discourses in the 19th and 20th centuries. We will study Joseph Conrad’s explorations of “darkness” in colonial Belgian Congo, Amos Tutuola’s investigation of “broken language” in postcolonial Nigeria; K. Sello Duiker’s writing on the mixology of race, sex, and violence in post-apartheid South Africa; Tarashankar Bandopadhyay’s alleged “creolization” of language in interwar India; and Laszlo Krasznahorkai’s interrogation of “strangeness” in conflict-ridden Hungary. 3 hrs. sem.

Schedule
Unknown
Location
Main
Instructors